


but we want to believe

by piggy09



Series: Obscure Word Fics [8]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Purple Prose, Self-Harm, Suicide, This is compliant with canon just think about what warnings you need to watch the show basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-05-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 09:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1682663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not a story about the city. This is a story about Sarah Manning. </p><p>(Don't tell the city that, though.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	but we want to believe

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Living Lore](https://archiveofourown.org/works/253393) by [silverpard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverpard/pseuds/silverpard). 



> From a prompt on Tumblr:  
> "Orphan Black | Petrichor: the smell of dry rain on the ground."
> 
> This is very, very distantly inspired by the "Living Lore" series; you should read that, because it is spectacular.

The city has waited for Sarah Manning for a long time.

The city is nameless – names are for people who move through its streetveins, its buildingbones. Names are what people give the various pieces of the city, breaking it down into avenues and neighborhoods, syllables that roll on tongues and are severed by teeth. The city bucks underneath these names like an animal under a hand it does not trust. Names twist and change with the years. The city grows, cracks its bones and reshapes itself, but does not change. Not really.

It thinks maybe it’s time to try.

But this is not a story about the city. This is a story about Sarah Manning. Like some stories, it has a prologue; it might have an epilogue, too. These things haven’t been decided yet.

The city is there for all of it, beginning middle end. Or it will be. Maybe. Time is a funny sort of thing.

This is a story about Sarah Manning, and the prologue goes like this:

Alison Hendrix’s feet touch the ground, and the city wakes.

Or maybe it is Elizabeth Childs’ feet, or Rachel Duncan’s. That doesn’t matter, not really; that is not the most important part of the story. What does matter is that these feet were Important, the capital-I of sentience.

There have been Important people before. Cities rise and fall around that small change in letter, a single trembling finger hitting the “Shift” key. Cities rise and fall, and the city…well. The city wants only to rise.

So maybe it was Rachel Duncan’s feet, then. They did not quite touch the ground, teetering as they were in their heels; still, the city is the air around skyscrapers and the city is telephone wires. The city knew Rachel Duncan, felt her teethsnapping hunger, knew her dangerous.

Knew her _hungry_ , and the city was a hungry thing too, aching to prove itself. It had not had a story yet. So it twined around those heeled feet like a cat, smoothing the pavement, calling down thunderstorms. (Rachel Duncan, it found, had a flare for the dramatic.)

She didn’t notice or care, particularly. Stung, the city pulled itself to suburbia to lick its wounds. The rain from the thunderstorms dried on the ground, and for the first time Rachel Duncan stumbled.

But that doesn’t matter, not really; we’re still in the prologue, the prologue to the prologue. (Stories have layers. They are serpentine things, and they shed their skins quick. Hold them to the light. Read your future in them.) Rachel Duncan will stumble again. You’ll be there for it. Have patience.

The next layer goes like this: The city settled itself in suburbia, drowning out the sounds of car horns and the stench of piss for fresh-cut grass and the twittering of birds, soccer whistles slung around necks.

Alison Hendrix walked over its back and the city woke, again, woke hungry. Because Alison Hendrix was hungry too; she didn’t know it, not really, but she was. It was a curious sort of hunger, in that it sang the same note as Rachel Duncan’s. Really the two of them were far too similar.

Cities fall in love easily; they are like people, in that respect. The city dried the rain and left blue skies for soccer practice, long walks of the neighborhood, playdates in the park. The light was always green and Alison Hendrix was always on time…but she was not thankful. Again the city grew bored. There was an itch, there was a storm building. Something was coming.

The city pulled into itself and considered. Three sets of feet painted tracks across its asphalt skin.

Wait. Three.

Elizabeth Childs (“Beth, please, c’mon”) still walked briskly, at this time. Her footsteps had not started dragging, yet; they would, but for now her feet were gunshots, all full of intent. Unlike the others (and they were others, they were all connected, the city drank their reflections from the sides of buildings and the mirrors over sinks, drank their thumbprints from doorknobs and keyboards and railings and found them _wanting_ ) she pound-pounded through the streets almost daily. The city grew to know her and – of course – grew to love her. Beth loved the city too.

“d” is such a little letter, but it means “past-tense.” Beth love _d_.

Then she got a phone call, humming like a plucked string across the city, across all of the city. It was busy – it was licking sweat from the neck of a thief in an alley, it was twining itself around the new building rising in brightshiny downtown, it was fucking the man in the hotel and being fucked by him in time – but it listened.

Katja Obinger had not entered the story yet, not really; she was lurking offstage, in the wings, her voice a stage whisper as it slid into Elizabeth-Beth-Child’s ears.

 _Genetic identicals_ , she said, and with a crack like gunthunder ( _andtheyreoff!_ )the story woke.

You could say the city woke, but cities never sleep.

(It woke anyways.)

And now the city was always there, with Elizabeth Childs, folding streets under her feet to get her There in half-time, dusting the static from telephone calls. The air was dry as bones; it did not rain. The streets were clear for Beth to run, the beating of her footsteps like a heart.

Beth did not run. Her footsteps began to drag on the cement; the pharmacies sang _Beth_ and the streets hummed harmony, aching with loss.

Beth did not run. Her footsteps dragged to Alison Hendrix’s house and dragged away, like she was carrying Alison Hendrix’s body along with her own. Despite this, despite this slow decay of the person that was Beth, the city was pleased. It could feel storythreads twining around Alison and Beth, making them AlisonandBethand. _AlisonandBethand_ what, the city asked.

“Whoa. Hey, I’m Cosima.” (Cosima Niehaus 28 years old not cityblood San Francisco Berkeley not cityblood storyblood story not city not story not city) “What a _trip_.”

 _AlisonandBethandCosima_ , the city sang, _AlisonandBethandCosima_.

It loved Cosima too, because Cosima _noticed_. Cosima tracked the patterns of pennies on the ground, Cosima kept a close eye on the weather patterns and Cosima, stoned out of her mind, asked Alison: “Do you think a city could achieve _sentience?_ ”

 _Yes_ , the city said in a cacophony of ambulance sirens streaming by Alison’s house. _Yes_ , said the city in the flicker of lights overhead. _Yes_ , said the city, _yesyesyes_ , and the sunlight struck the glass with a brightness like shattering.

“No,” said Alison Hendrix, “don’t be ridiculous.”

The life twining in Cosima, the richness of blood in her, seemed a direct counterbalance to _AlisonandBethand_. They popped pills in harmony. Alison’s hands began to tremble, like the prelude to an earthquake.

Beth did not run.

Her gun rang with a footstep sound but it was Maggie Chen who fell. The city felt the ground, felt Maggie Chen on the ground, felt the chest of Maggie Chen on the ground, felt the bullet in the chest of Maggie Chen on the ground and felt, in that bullet, the shaking of Beth’s hands.

In a distant past, the city might have been an altar – obsidian, as the best altars are, and thirsty as a desert.

In this story it is not an altar. In this story, though, it drank Maggie Chen’s blood as it seeped into the pavement. It considered.

It considered the fact that it was still thirsty.

It considered the fact that it was still thirsty and that Beth, like a moon, waned. Beth waned and Alison wined and Cosima was here-gone-here again and Rachel Duncan had left a long time ago, her feet an easy click onto a plane bound somewhere the city didn’t care about.

The story was unraveling. Beth was unraveling, and the city loved Beth like it didn’t love the others. The others didn’t love it back.

But Beth didn’t either, and the story needed something.

This is a story of parallels, mirrors and reflections: Elizabeth Childs and Alison Hendrix sank in a mirror spiral of drowning. Rachel Duncan stepped on a plane. Cosima Niehaus stepped on a bus.

Helena still needed a mirror, when she arrived. Her chest was a gaping hole; her chest sang with loss, like a bullet wound.

Helena loved God – or at least she was supposed to – but she loved trailing her hands along the sides of buildings, she loved clear skies, she loved the crusts remaining in old pizza boxes on the curb. She was a thankful sort of person, all pious even as she sliced blades over her skin and even as her glittering bird eyes devoured driver’s licenses and passports.

Helena was hungry too. Her blood dripped to the altar-that-was-not of the city. The city drank and slid, serpentine, into Helena’s dreams; like temptation, it was a snake. It whispered in her ear _Helena, I am still hungry_.

 _Helena, tell me a story_.

(Helena loved, yes, but she struggled to disentangle this love from other things. Love was difficult for her.

That’s alright. The city could love enough for both of them and it did, it did love her. London had Jack the Ripper, San Francisco had the Zodiac Killer, the city had Helena. Helena and her story.)

The city went to Helena and Helena went to God. God obliged.

Katja Obinger was the next piece of the puzzle; her feet where they touched down were like nothing as much as they were like hooves, hooves of a lamb, a lamb for an altar. Amen.

She coughed. Blood hit the ground like the first drops of rain, the beginning of a storm.

The city drank, and the city remembered Katja’s voice on the phone, the scraped-wire rawness of it. It remembered, suddenly, Beth – Beth who shook, Beth who no longer pounded through the city’s veins, the city’s arteries, Beth who was no longer part of the city.

It called _Beth_ in Beth’s apartment but it was empty. It called _Beth_ at the police station but that was empty too.

The city could not find Beth. Couldnotfindcouldnotfindmissingcouldnotfind.

The airport could not find her and neither could the shipyard. The city whirled to the train station—

And was distracted, blindingly, by the feeling of Sarah Manning’s feet on the ground.

She was lovely. She was beautiful. She was, the city thought, everything.

The story breathed; the story settled. Here was a locus.

And there, the city realized, there was Beth.

(She had been wearing heels. The city did not know her in heels, not really; still, it was ashamed for not knowing her. She was still _Beth_ , worn away as she was by pill bottles and alcohol, stress and sleeplessness. She was still Beth.)

(“Was” is such a little word, but it means “past-tense” too.)

A city is a large and heavy thing; a city breathes in the sighs of trains and the flapping of pigeonwings, its beating heart the pounding of drumsticks on paint tubs and the patter of feet on sidewalks. It is large large.

I tell you this so you will understand what I mean, when I say it was distracted. Sure, it was lawspassedincityhall bankrobbery alleycatsrutting trafficjam alisonhendrixpoppingpills flickeringstreetlight prostitute preacher homelessman businessman katjaobingercoughinginherhotelroom razordownhelenasback bloodonthecity bloodinthecity cityblood citybloodbloodblood but mostly the city was Beth, and the city was Sarah.

Sarah is not the city. This is not a story about the city, after all, it is a story about Sarah. How could this be a story about Sarah if Sarah and the city are the same?

But she could be. Could have been. The city was learning her, slowly, and soon it would try to be her as she would try to be, well—

Beth gave herself gladly to the city-which-could-have-been-an-altar. The city which was thinking, increasingly, of altars; of remembered ululations and old and heavy gods.

When Beth died, she tasted of rust. Blood on the train tracks. It was a cheater’s death; parts of Beth would scatter everywhere as the train rolled her blood outside of the city. Not a fair death, for a woman who spent her days giving herself and taking, again and again, from the concrete. Not a fair death at all.

The city took part of her. Sarah Manning took the rest and ran. The city licked blood from its teethtracks with its traintongue and followed. It changed the weather to suit the mood (Cosima Niehaus did not belong), it kept the streets smooth (Rachel Duncan left), it turned the lights green (Alison Hendrix drowned and withered), it listened to her heartbeat-feet on the ground (Elizabeth Childs left) and followed her in the reflections of buildings (Helena opened the door to Katja’s apartment).

(This is a story about Sarah Manning. It is also a story about mirrors.)

(The city was with Beth, and it was with Sarah, but it also turned the cameras away from Helena and opened the lock gently as a touch. It did not manage to dim the noise.)

(Katja’s texts clattered into Beth’s empty phone, SarahBeth’s empty phone. Katja paced in tight circles, and the city was there too.)

(Cosima Niehaus got off a bus. The air around her smelled like patchouli and also, slightly, of potential. The city was with Cosima, humming as the strings of the story wove tighter and tighter and tighter. It got her a cab, rolling up as neatly as a welcome mat.)

(Alison Hendrix checked her phone. The city slowed the car behind her so it did not rear-end her. If the city could be concerned, it would probably be concerned about Alison.)

(Cities cannot be concerned. They are buildings and streets and ideas.)

This is a story about Sarah Manning. It is also a story about mirrors.

This is a story about Sarah Manning – about her, her daughter, _Alisonand       CosimaandHelenaandKatjaandRachel_ ; it is about other people, too, but at the heart of it this story is about Sarah Manning.

This is not a story about the city.

No, no, no.

This is not about the city at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Out to sea we hear  
> Los Angeles calling  
> each one of us falling  
> into vorticist dreams.  
> In the air you see  
> the city cells sprawling  
> like circuits installing  
> these silicon dreams.  
> \--"San Narcisco," Faded Paper Figures
> 
> I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry. This does not fill your prompt at all and also it makes _pretty much no sense_. This is my changeling child, though, and I will defend it 'til death.
> 
> I don't really have anything else to say about this. I guess if you liked, leave comments? That would be cool. Thanks for reading, chums.


End file.
